SF seeks injunction to stop CCSF closure

By Bob Egelko :
November 25, 2013
: Updated: November 25, 2013 9:05pm

Pat Wynne leads protestors in a song at the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges headquarters in Novato, Ca, on Friday, Oct. 11, 2013.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera asked a judge Monday to block a commission from shutting down City College of San Francisco by revoking its accreditation next summer, saying the commission's review was marred by conflicts of interest and driven by a political agenda to limit access to community colleges.

The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges used a review process "plagued with irregularities that demonstrate (the commission's) bias against the college and its constituents," Herrera's office said in a motion for a preliminary injunction in San Francisco Superior Court.

Unless the courts intervene to protect CCSF and its 85,000 students, said Deputy City Attorney Sara Eisenberg, "our California community colleges will be subject to unfair and unlawful treatment."

The private, nonprofit commission, based in Novato, is one of six regional agencies, overseen by the U.S. Department of Education, that provide accreditation for two-year community colleges. Without accreditation, the colleges are ineligible for the state and federal funds that keep them operating.

In July 2012, the commission gave CCSF notice of its most severe sanction, saying the college was so beset by mismanagement and financial problems that it no longer deserved official recognition. It said management was fragmented between administrators and faculty and had failed to make budget cuts while state funding evaporated.

The commission issued its final decision last July, finding that CCSF - despite a flurry of management reorganization, revenue increases and pay cuts - had solved virtually none of its problems and would have its accreditation withdrawn in July 2014.

State college officials have replaced the school's elected trustees with a special trustee, Robert Agrella, who has appealed the commission's decision but opposes Herrera's lawsuit and another suit filed in September by the faculty union, the California Federation of Teachers. The union also asked the court for an injunction Monday.

Herrera sued the commission on the city's behalf in August. In Monday's request for an injunction, Eisenberg, the city's lawyer, claimed the panel was motivated by its opposition to the "open access mission of community colleges - to provide educational opportunities for anyone, regardless of income or ability."

While CCSF's faculty, staff and students have been strong advocates of that policy, Eisenberg said, the commission has backed a "narrower junior college model" excluding students who were not seeking degrees.

Herrera's office also cited the U.S. Department of Education's findings that the commission's assessment process was conflicted because both its 17-member evaluation team in 2012 and its nine-member review panel this year included only one professor. Federal regulations require such agencies to make a "good-faith effort ... to have both academic and administrative personnel reasonably represented."

The commission has issued warnings of loss of accreditation against six other community colleges since 2008, but all six had been warned or sanctioned in the past, some of them multiple times - in contrast to CCSF, which has never been sanctioned before, Herrera said.

Herrera requested a Dec. 24 hearing on an injunction, which would allow the college to keep its accreditation while the suit continued. The commission said his claims were meritless.